Our summer trip, as I said before, will be to Greece: a number of days on our own in Crete, followed by another Rick Steves tour, followed by a couple of days in Switzerland on our way home. Greece has apparently become our every-ten-years tradition. We went there on our honeymoon in 1998 and again in 2008. Now in 2018 we will spend a substantial amount of time on the mainland, instead of, as in the past, spending almost all of our time in the islands. We've never before been to Crete, or to Delphi, and our only experience in the Peloponnese was a four-hour bus ride from the ferry docks at Patras to Athens. In 2008, we did take the train up to Kalambaka, to spend a day at the sky-monasteries of Meteora, but we went right back to Athens after that, then took an overnight ferry out to the Dodecanese (Rhodes and Symi). We've considered visiting Mary Joy's grandfather's home town of Politika, on the island of Evia (he left there in 1910 as Konstantinos Grammatikos and ended up as a restaurateur named Gus Graham, in Kenosha, Wisconsin), but that didn't work out for this trip. Maybe in 2028!
Saturday, February 24, 2018
Saturday Market and Home
On Saturday, June 3, we had breakfast, then went to the Saturday market at Lazaro Cardenas Park, buying some craft gifts and edibles.
After lunch at restaurant outdoors on the Malecón, we caught our taxi to the airport at 1:30. We mentioned to the driver that I had been to Puerto Vallarta 29 years earlier, and there had been many changes since then. He said that there had, indeed. The city had more people, was more spread out, there were many more hotels, the cost of living was much higher. People had a hard time making ends meet. His wife worked in a hospital and was making 80 pesos (a little over $4) a day. We had earlier talked with a man who had worked in a wholesale butcher shop. He had made 100 pesos (about $11) a day, working long hours with little training. Early on, he had chopped off the end of his finger. His supervisor had told him to wrap it up, put on a glove and go back to work. At the end of the day, he had gone to the hospital, telling them that he had injured himself at home, not wanting to jeopardize his job. At the other end of the economic spectrum in Mexico is Carlos Slim, who bought the national telephone company when it was privatized, and has on-and-off passed Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Jeff Bezos to be considered richest man in the world. Mexico is the real world, like the great majority of societies in human history, with a tiny, fabulously wealthy ruling class, while the vast majority of people scratch out a bare living. We in America and Europe live in a bubble that is threatened more and more by increasing inequality, and the fact that globalization and the productivity increases due to automation are controlled by the wealthy and powerful. Xenophobic nationalist populists in many first-world countries are trying to strengthen the walls of this bubble, but the policies of the Trump administration, for instance, are actually increasing the inequality, so that if things keep going the way they have been, some day the bubble will pop and we will join the third world.
Our flight was late getting out, so we didn't get home until after ten o'clock. It had snowed while we were gone. That afternoon in Puerto Vallarta, the temperature had been 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius). When I went out to get our paper the next morning in Minnesota, the temperature was minus four degrees Fahrenheit (minus twenty Celsius). This was a swing of 90 degrees Fahrenheit, 50 degrees Celsius.
We liked Puerto Vallarta. Mary Joy actually liked it better than Merida, which surprised me. Of course, we ate very well there, and had our favorite hot-chocolate place (Vallarta Factory, where Arnold Schwarzenegger had hung out smoking their hand-made cigars while filming Predator) and favorite ice cream parlor (Lix).
After lunch at restaurant outdoors on the Malecón, we caught our taxi to the airport at 1:30. We mentioned to the driver that I had been to Puerto Vallarta 29 years earlier, and there had been many changes since then. He said that there had, indeed. The city had more people, was more spread out, there were many more hotels, the cost of living was much higher. People had a hard time making ends meet. His wife worked in a hospital and was making 80 pesos (a little over $4) a day. We had earlier talked with a man who had worked in a wholesale butcher shop. He had made 100 pesos (about $11) a day, working long hours with little training. Early on, he had chopped off the end of his finger. His supervisor had told him to wrap it up, put on a glove and go back to work. At the end of the day, he had gone to the hospital, telling them that he had injured himself at home, not wanting to jeopardize his job. At the other end of the economic spectrum in Mexico is Carlos Slim, who bought the national telephone company when it was privatized, and has on-and-off passed Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Jeff Bezos to be considered richest man in the world. Mexico is the real world, like the great majority of societies in human history, with a tiny, fabulously wealthy ruling class, while the vast majority of people scratch out a bare living. We in America and Europe live in a bubble that is threatened more and more by increasing inequality, and the fact that globalization and the productivity increases due to automation are controlled by the wealthy and powerful. Xenophobic nationalist populists in many first-world countries are trying to strengthen the walls of this bubble, but the policies of the Trump administration, for instance, are actually increasing the inequality, so that if things keep going the way they have been, some day the bubble will pop and we will join the third world.
Our flight was late getting out, so we didn't get home until after ten o'clock. It had snowed while we were gone. That afternoon in Puerto Vallarta, the temperature had been 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius). When I went out to get our paper the next morning in Minnesota, the temperature was minus four degrees Fahrenheit (minus twenty Celsius). This was a swing of 90 degrees Fahrenheit, 50 degrees Celsius.
We liked Puerto Vallarta. Mary Joy actually liked it better than Merida, which surprised me. Of course, we ate very well there, and had our favorite hot-chocolate place (Vallarta Factory, where Arnold Schwarzenegger had hung out smoking their hand-made cigars while filming Predator) and favorite ice cream parlor (Lix).
Friday, February 23, 2018
Hidden Mexico
On Friday, June 2, we again got up early to catch a taxi to Marina Vallarta, this time to go to Vallarta Adventures, to take their Hidden Mexico tour. The people going on that tour were divided into two groups. Our group of seven--Mary Joy and I, plus a mother and her two sons in their twenties, from New England, and a couple from Mississippi--was led by our guide, Aaron, to a big, open, yellow, four-wheel-drive truck, where we met our driver, Neri, a former boxer. If he was as good a boxer as he was a driver, he must have been a champion. Aaron had spent the great majority of his 27 years in the United States, mostly in Denver, so his English was perfect.
We buckled ourselves in on the facing seats and headed toward the south end of Banderas Bay. We passed through Mismaloya and Boca de Tomatlán before heading inland. Our first stop was a field where there were a number of ancient petroglyphs--rock carvings of owls, snakes, etc. It isn't clear exactly when they were carved, or for what purpose.
Then we spent some time at the very nice botanical gardens. After that, it was time for lunch, at a place way out in the country. On site were a vacation home for a city-dweller, a small chapel and an outdoor kitchen. We took off our shoes and socks and waded into a small stream, in the middle of which were large picnic tables, set across the current. Our feet were in the water, and, at first it felt cold, but we quickly got used to it. The lunch, cooked on-site, was very good, as was the guacamole made then and there by one of our group under Aaron's supervision.
We then drove to a distillery, where we tasted various liqueurs, as well as their raicilla (agave moonshine) and what was called tequila, though they weren't allowed to use that term on the label, since it was made right there and not in Tequila.
We visited the town of El Tuito, where our young New Englanders tossed a frisbee with little kids in the square, giving it to them at the end. We weren't able to get into the church.
We visited the workshop of a man whose family has a license to carve rare rosewood that he finds dead in the forest. We bought a small mortar and pestle.
We stopped at a roadside bakery and got some baked goods and a bunch of little, sweet bananas. There are many varieties of banana in the world, other than the kind you can get in U.S. supermarkets. We had seen a number of them in India.
That evening, we saw the first hour of a folkloric dance performance by a troupe of young people, in Lazaro Cardenas Park, south of the river. Then we had dinner at what is supposed to be the best restaurant in Puerto Vallarta, Café des Artistes. It was one of the best meals we've ever had. The grouper was cooked perfectly, as was everything else. The dessert was fun--served to look like a potted plant.
We buckled ourselves in on the facing seats and headed toward the south end of Banderas Bay. We passed through Mismaloya and Boca de Tomatlán before heading inland. Our first stop was a field where there were a number of ancient petroglyphs--rock carvings of owls, snakes, etc. It isn't clear exactly when they were carved, or for what purpose.
Then we spent some time at the very nice botanical gardens. After that, it was time for lunch, at a place way out in the country. On site were a vacation home for a city-dweller, a small chapel and an outdoor kitchen. We took off our shoes and socks and waded into a small stream, in the middle of which were large picnic tables, set across the current. Our feet were in the water, and, at first it felt cold, but we quickly got used to it. The lunch, cooked on-site, was very good, as was the guacamole made then and there by one of our group under Aaron's supervision.
We then drove to a distillery, where we tasted various liqueurs, as well as their raicilla (agave moonshine) and what was called tequila, though they weren't allowed to use that term on the label, since it was made right there and not in Tequila.
We visited the town of El Tuito, where our young New Englanders tossed a frisbee with little kids in the square, giving it to them at the end. We weren't able to get into the church.
We visited the workshop of a man whose family has a license to carve rare rosewood that he finds dead in the forest. We bought a small mortar and pestle.
We stopped at a roadside bakery and got some baked goods and a bunch of little, sweet bananas. There are many varieties of banana in the world, other than the kind you can get in U.S. supermarkets. We had seen a number of them in India.
That evening, we saw the first hour of a folkloric dance performance by a troupe of young people, in Lazaro Cardenas Park, south of the river. Then we had dinner at what is supposed to be the best restaurant in Puerto Vallarta, Café des Artistes. It was one of the best meals we've ever had. The grouper was cooked perfectly, as was everything else. The dessert was fun--served to look like a potted plant.
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